


Excuses

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-29
Updated: 2007-07-29
Packaged: 2019-01-19 22:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12419583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: 'They never would have grown up. They were his best friends - and they had spoiled him.' Remus's justification for showing up at Grimmauld Place that night (there's always an ulterior motive). [One-shot.]





	Excuses

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

There was something about the prospect of having children that made Remus Lupin feel very, very old.

It shouldn't have been so startling, coming from a man whose hair got twice as grey once a month, who was far more exhausted than his thirty-eight years should have allowed. He supposed he could blame it on a mid-life crisis.

Either that, or James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, and Sirius Black.

He probably should have hated them for tricking him into thinking he was somebody, for disguising their naiveté as fast-talking, clever adolescent delight. They stood for everything he shouldn't have, under any normal circumstances, been allowed to experience - all the thrills that come with being alive. And they had dragged him, silly quiet little werewolf Remus, into their perfect boyhood bubble. It had been James who had taken him out on the Quidditch pitch before their first flying lesson, Sirius who'd pushed him, quite literally, into his first kiss (Mary Macdonald, fourth year, absolutely mortifying), and Peter who had cluelessly, inexplicably said, "So why not Transfigure ourselves into animals?"

They never would have grown up. They were his best friends - and they had spoiled him.

And he felt stupid for ever believing in it, stupid for thinking that _love_ could possibly overcome whatever he had been cursed with. Ironic, wasn't it? Now, prefect-turned-professor Remus Lupin, Saint Remus, the _responsible_ one, was staring adulthood full in the face and recoiling as though allergic.

Allergic to hurting the people he loved or to the loss of a childhood that was everything to him, he couldn't really be sure.

But there was one conscionable escape. He could die a hero's death, fighting alongside the boy, the boy who so closely resembled the one who had changed for him all those years ago -

Kissing a sleeping Tonks on the forehead, he threw on a cloak and shut the door behind him.

_Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place._


End file.
